


Cracked Yolks

by mangonadamassacre



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Eventual Romance, Love Triangles, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21835720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangonadamassacre/pseuds/mangonadamassacre
Summary: You’ve got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. Shane’s back story is explained and a new female farmer looking for redemption arrives in Stardew Valley. The story evolves through different characters' perspectives.
Relationships: Elliott (Stardew Valley)/Original Female Character(s), Elliott (Stardew Valley)/Reader, Elliott/Female Player (Stardew Valley), Elliott/Player (Stardew Valley), Elliott/Shane/Female Player (Stardew Valley), Shane & Female Player (Stardew Valley), Shane/Female Player (Stardew Valley), Shane/Player (Stardew Valley)
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

Shane hated everything about Pelican Town. From its sleepy, nearly-empty streets at almost all hours of the day to the immaculately clean beaches to the absurd festivals the townsfolk called “traditions.”

It was like living in a postcard. A two-dimensional nightmare that only he was having. Everyone else seemed to be just as pleasant as the town they called home.

Equal parts infuriating and mind-boggling, Shane took a deep drink of his beer.

He’d been in Pelican Town for going on two years now. The economy took a downturn a few years back and he was unable to find a job in Zuzu City. He hated living there, too, but at least they had bars that sold alcohol and didn’t look like they belonged in a Western-themed amusement park.

“Hey dipshit, have you seen her yet?”

A large hand pounded Shane’s back and Alex slid into the empty seat next to his. Shane had momentarily forgotten about the other person who didn’t seem to quite fit in among the rest of the smiling townsfolk.

“What are you talking about?” Shane asked, pulling his beer closer. Alex rarely dropped into Stardrop Saloon and when he did, he generally raised hell. Or strutted for hours near the pool table reliving his high school glory days for Haley. Shane couldn’t decide which one was worse.

“The new farmer taking over Dragondew Farm! It’s all anyone has been talking about lately,” he began, then paused.

“But I guess you’d have to actually talk to people to know that,” Alex finished, smirking.

“I don’t care who moves in,” Shane said. “Literally no one can make this Stepford-gone-country town any better.”

“I hope she’s hot,” Alex continued, ignoring him. “Farmer girls have to have strong thighs, right? If she’s moving here to start a farm, she’s got to be single and young, at least. Do you think she’ll be prettier than Haley?”

Shane chugged his beer.

“You’re going to get fat if you keep drinking those like that,” Alex commented. “Those pale ales are like 250 calories a pop.”

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Shane stood up.

“Yeah? Fuck off,” he said, leaving the saloon.

The night was crisp and windy as Shane walked home. Compared to the smooth, grime-free stones in the street, his shoes looked heinous. Tomorrow he’d wake up and lace them on again and go work at Joja Mart again for eight hours. And the day after and the day after that it’ll repeat. Again. And again. And again. The weekends were almost indistinguishable and made for drinking himself into oblivion.

He hated the town for another reason: It seemed stuck in time. Just like his life had been.

It wasn’t just his job or lack thereof that drove him to crash at his Aunt Marnie’s house in Pelican Town. There had been a girl. His fiancee.

She was beautiful and perfect until he had found out that she was cheating on him with her spin instructor.

That was when the drinking started. His manager and coworkers at the white-collar job Shane worked at would find out that he was a not-so-high-functioning alcoholic.

Around that time, the economy crashed and people were getting evicted left and right. Several key industries in Zuzu City were hobbled and as a result, thousands of people were laid off. Shane was on the last 400G of his severance package when he decided he’d skip town for the country life. Or at least until he could get back on his feet.

Before he had decided, it had been years since he had visited Pelican Town. But Aunt Marnie--the sweetest woman alive--was the only relative willing to offer him steeply discounted rent. He accepted her offer, immediately got his job at Joja Mart and since then, it seemed nothing had changed at all.

If there was a magic dial to flip to any random date and time within the past two years in Shane’s life, it would have shown the viewer the exact same thing 730 times.

“Hey there! Do you know where Stardrop Saloon is?”

Shane looked up just as a woman jogged into the light of a streetlight.

This had to be the new farmer. Alex has guessed correctly--she was indeed young and attractive. Shane searched her face as she jogged closer. Brown-skinned, tall and dark-haired, her face had an open, welcoming smile. Not like the creepy automaton smiles the rest of the townsfolk plastered on.

“I’m Gloria,” she said, extending her hand. Shane shook it.

“Shane.”

“Nice to meet you Shane! I just moved in and I’m still trying to get a feel for the lay of the town.”

He pointed. “The saloon should be a few blocks that way, to the left beyond a small green space with a bench. They only sell beer, if you’re looking for something stronger.”

She laughed.

“Definitely not looking for anything stronger! I’ve got to wake up at 6 am to water my first-ever crop of green beans and parsnips! I’m actually ridiculously excited to see if I fail or succeed. Do you farm here in Stardew Valley?”

What kind of person is excited to fail? Shane thought.

“I’m not a farmer, no.”

She didn’t press him any further about it. He hated it when people asked what he did. He was more than his job, he thought. Sometimes. On good days, at least.

“Well, thanks for the directions! I hope I’ll see you around--I’m at Dragondew Farm. I know a lot of folks are curious about what’s happening there, so feel free to visit when you want.”

“Yeah,” was the best response Shane could come up with. It had been more than a while since a woman had invited him anywhere, much less to her home, and it had caught him off guard.

Gloria headed in the direction he had pointed and he watched her as she left. Totally confident, totally cool in her loose overalls and band t-shirt and…..were those monster-hunting grade combat boots she was wearing? And an enchanted ring (or five glittering) on her fingers?

In the brief time it took to meet her, she had already established herself as the most interesting person in Stardew Valley from Shane’s perspective. And she had to be what--25 at the most? Shane could almost feel his back ache thinking about how much energy it would require for someone to revitalize an entire farm by themselves.

He was actually interested to see what she’d do with the old farm. Maybe things would finally start to change in this godforsaken town.

\--------------------

Shane was infatuated. He knew it and he hated it.

Watching Gloria run through town was the highlight of most of his days. It was more like a jog, but her posture always gave off a commanding and urgent vibe, like she was a doctor rushing to perform heart surgery when in reality, it was probably turnip- or chicken-related.

She always gave him a bright smile and a wave, which he returned after the first few times he saw her. She seemed to do a lot of her shopping early in the morning, while he was on his way to work. He had debated on whether this was her attempt to make a pass at him or see him more, but his lack of confidence ultimately won out and he decided that wasn’t the case.

A few days after he and Gloria met, Shane realized that Alex was right--everyone was talking about her. From Mayor Lewis proclaiming how entrepreneurial she was, to Evelyn wondering aloud what types of plants Gloria would grow, she was the literal talk of the town. Even Shane’s goddaughter Jas commented on Gloria’s intermittent appearance in front of Marnie’s house as she went about whatever the hell it was farmers do when they weren’t on their farm.

Gloria didn’t stop by the saloon often but when she did, she always stopped to chat with Shane. Based on their brief conversations, she seemed determined to stay in the valley.

“I can’t go back to where I was at,” she stated one evening. “There’s possibility here and now, in the earth, in my grandpa’s legacy, in my new neighbors. In the air, even. Zuzu City was decomposing under my feet.”

It took Shane aback when she had said that. Dark words for someone he had come to see as confident and carefree. Sometimes he wondered what she left behind that was so horrible, and if it was anything like what he had run from. And of course, what she really saw in this dinky little town to make her so passionate about it after only a few weeks there.

He wondered what else he didn’t know about her and if he would ever know it all someday. He hoped he got the chance to find out.

When Shane thought about building a life in Stardew, it had always been an unhappy thought exercise. There were a few single women there who he could’ve been interested in, maybe even dated and started a family with. But he felt like it was an uphill battle: He had already established himself as the town drunk. Who could love an asshole like him?

In contrast, Gloria’s talk of possibility gave Shane hope. Maybe she might be able to see through his garbage personality to who he really was. He didn’t even know who he really was, after years of drowning himself in the sauce.

But Shane could already see that he wasn’t the only one who was attracted to her shine.

Harvey, the local doctor, and Elliott, a self-proclaimed writer who lived on the beach, both seemed to talk to her at every opportunity they got. Harvey’s situation made the most sense--he was a doctor, after all, and she was doing intense physical labor every day. Of course she would need to see a doctor frequently.

But Elliott? From what little Shane knew about him, he just moped around the beach or the forest and talked in old-timey jargon. The guy thought--and honestly, looked like--he had walked out of a Jane Austen novel.

Despite Elliott’s underwhelming career, Shane knew he could compete with neither of those men if it really came down to it.

It was at this point that Shane would normally spiral into a void of self-loathing and beer, but he had to keep it together--this was his chance. He had finally caught her one day before work to arrange a time he could visit her farm.

A bunch of daffodils sat in one of his aunt’s vases. Shane had picked them earlier that morning before he had fed the chickens--that’s when the plants were supposed to be the most full of water, and therefore, at peak flower-picking form. The butter-yellow petals glistened lazily in the light of the kitchen as he contemplated whether he’d be taking them or not.

Everyone gave people flowers. He had seen Gloria herself shower townsfolk with flowers of all sorts so far, so this wasn’t a big deal. It wouldn’t be interpreted as anything but gratitude, and Shane could keep being a lonely, depressed bachelor holding a pathetic flame for a woman half a decade younger than himself.

Oof.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elliott with a man bun does yoga on Stardew's beach.

“No, you have to line up your thighs parallel to your arms.”

“How do I know if they’re parallel?”

“Are your toes pointed straight?”

“I know what parallel means! I just meant that I can’t see what I’m doing properly.”

“Gloria, do you mind if I manually adjust your legs?”

“....go for it?”

Gloria felt her pulse race as Elliott placed his hands on her and gently aligned her feet in the sand. He had his normally flowing hair tied up into a lazy bun and had swapped his Victorian-inspired uniform for some totally normal yoga clothes. The difference was jarring when she first stumbled onto his morning yoga sessions by accident--she hadn’t even recognized him at first. He went from stiff Austen cosplayer to hipster daddy dreamboat.

She was vibing with it.

Despite his normally affable personality, he took yoga seriously and she would bet good money that he was a yoga instructor, or maybe a personal trainer before he had moved to Stardew Valley. He definitely had the quads for it.

After the adjustments, Gloria instantly felt more stable and told him so.

“That’s the beauty of proper yoga form!” he half-shouted over the crashing waves, stretching his hands into the air. “Properly executed poses ground you with the earth and heighten your connection with it. Kind of like your farm work, except it’s on a deeply personal and introspective level.”

He was right. It was one thing to work on the land and with it and generate food from it to be distributed amongst her neighbors, but to actually connect with it like this was rare. There weren’t a lot of opportunities to do so between watering crops, saving up enough money to build a coop and battling monsters in the mines for precious ores.

With intermittent adjustments to Gloria’s form, they continued their yoga session for another half hour. Though she was formerly the type to make fun of ladies who did yoga all the time, she really enjoyed it. If she hadn’t been so snarky and pessimistic in Zuzu City, she probably would have benefited a lot from the practice.

So many people in Stardew seemed to be running from something, but the only thing she was running from was her terrible personality.

She had come to the jarring realization one day that she was an awful person and quickly decided that she didn’t want to be. Pessimistic, constantly putting other people down to make herself feel better, manipulating people to get what she wanted and maintaining a popping Instagram feed whose sole purpose was to make other people jealous were just some of her sins. Treating her partners like open bank accounts, always assuming everyone else was the problem and unabashedly demanding sympathy for it were also included in her greatest hits of horribleness.

Gloria had made a fortune during her short time as a Joja Mart senior web developer. She exploited each and every benefit or crumb of prestige she could from the position. At the time, it was easy to list off all of the shitty things she did--she wore her heinous personality like a badge of honor. But the next step of actually eradicating those behaviors and replacing them with better ones? That was way more time-intensive and required an enormous amount of self-reflection.

So who did she want to be, if not the goblin she seemed to act like? She wanted to be a person that other people would actually like--like like-like. The person her neighbors would drop off baked goods to. The person who waved and smiled at everyone, who made everyone feel welcome and warm. The person who was smart, yes, but packed full of just as much thoughtfulness and grace

Did a person like that exist? Gloria had met a few and had immediately tried to squash out their brilliance because she couldn’t stand them outshining her.

She had come to her grand realization almost a year ago and it was rough going. When she turned to her friends for help, she realized that she had either alienated her actual friends, or the ones that she was left with were just like her--vengeful, uncaring and only in it for themselves.

So she made her change by herself, as best as she could. She went to therapy and started trying to do things that helped get her a little closer to being the person she wanted to be. Which included reading self-help books, volunteering at her local community garden, saying hi to people more often and trying to really put herself in other peoples’ shoes. 

A lot of her “relationships” changed as she tried to change...some for the better! But most of the folks accustomed to old Gloria weren’t interested or prepared to support her in her journey of self-redemption. So they left. The invites to parties and gallery openings stopped, her 3 a.m. after-hours texts went unanswered and dried up.

By the time she had received word that her grandfather had passed away and left his property to her, she didn’t have a single person to hang out with on a regular basis despite making notable progress on her quest.

She wasn’t as cutthroat at work and Joja had given her poor reviews the past two quarters, despite being on better terms than ever with her team. She chatted with the other volunteers at the community garden and sometimes they got coffee after volunteering. She had long since shut down her Instagram. And her neighbors said hi to her now. One old gentleman even gave her a muffin one day that he was bringing home.

Given time, she knew that she would eventually make better friends with at least a few people. But a totally fresh start on a farm a few hours away was too tempting to resist. She could move and work hard and no one there would ever know what a heinous person she used to be. So she gave in to the temptation and jumped at the opportunity.

Which was how she found herself doing beach yoga with an amateur, overly formal yogi.

Elliott sat down next to her and handed her a cracked mug of hot tea.

“I don’t think I’ve smelled tea like this before. What flavor is it? It smells so so….sweet?” she said.

He laughed. “It is actually birthday cake tea! Pierre was having a sale on it and lord knows where he procured it from.”

They sipped quietly as the waves crashed in front of them. The sun looked watery in the early spring light.

“Do you ever think you’re just playing at being a writer? I feel that way about farming,” she asked. “I feel like I’m just mimicking what farmers do. What my grandfather did.”

“Oh, all the time,” he responded immediately. “You are not alone. I am significantly older than you and I claim to be a writer but have not even published a book yet.”

Gloria started. “No, I didn’t mean to be critical! I was just...yeah. I didn’t mean to be critical. But feeling like an imposter all the time is lonely.”

“So you just wanted to connect. It is alright. As I said, you are not alone,” he replied, and gently clinked his mug against hers.

“It can get lonely in this valley. It is a great community and an inspiring place to live and work, but the things that make this valley good--like wide open space, quiet places, few people--can amplify loneliness.”

The ocean wind whipped around both of them and Gloria felt goosebumps rise along her arms. She had traded in her overalls for flimsier workout clothes that morning. She adjusted herself closer to Elliott who seemed totally unaffected by the cold.

“Have you found anything to stop feeling like an imposter? I know that if I keep at farming, I’ll just become a farmer eventually. But there isn’t a set date or anything concrete like that to let me know when to stop feeling like a child. I wish there was.”

“What position did you hold before coming here? How did you know you belonged there?”

She really didn’t want to talk about her life before Stardew.

“It was different. I got a degree and then I used the degree to make a ton of money. What’s the farming equivalent of that?”

“There is not an equivalent! It sounds like you worked a very white-collar job. What you produced was intangible. What you do now is keep your neighbors and family and friends alive, Gloria. You provide food and goods that have already made a notable improvement in the local economy. You are still trying to squeeze yourself into whatever old equation made you feel comfortable in Zuzu City. You need to define new metrics for success here, so you can succeed and feel like you belong.”

Metrics for success? Who was this person? Maybe Elliott wasn’t a personal trainer before Stardew after all.

“Thank you. I need to keep that in perspective. Things are different, I’m different, this is brand new territory.”

“Indeed--your archer’s pose can attest to that.”

She flicked a tiny seashell at him. “Not fair. Today was barely day three!”

“You need to loosen that stiff farmer’s body up. How have you not turned to stone with all those repetitive movements required of you?”

“None of the poses required that much flexibility. You haven’t even seen what I can do just yet.”

“Well I look forward to the joyous day that I learn.”

Gloria felt a blush bloom across her face. “Do you have the time, Elliott?”

“It’s almost 9 a.m. Do you have farmer things to attend to?”

“Sort of. Shane is going to drop by the farm soon to check out what I’ve been up to. I should probably be there.”

“Probably. Will I see you tomorrow?”

She stood and dusted sand off her pants.

“You won’t. I have some work to do in the mines to finish my plans for a sprinkler system….but I wish I could see you.”

“No need to use up a wish. Do you want to convene at the Stardrop afterward? If you are not too tired?”

“Like a date?” she ventured, half-jokingly but also half-hopefully.

“Yes. I want to date you.”

Gloria’s heart stopped. “Are you serious? Did you seriously just...come out and say it like that?”

He laughed. “Yes I did. Does 6 p.m. work?”


End file.
